


rhinestone-studded moniker

by musiclily88



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, ghost of saturday night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 15:05:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12192246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclily88/pseuds/musiclily88
Summary: Based on the lyrics from Tom Waits’ song Ghost of Saturday Night





	rhinestone-studded moniker

Louis lights his fifth cigarette of the night, watching a cab snake its way across the boulevard, smoke getting in his eyes. He assumes the cabbie’s trying to rake in one last fare for the night, given that it’s nearly dawn and everyone who’s anyone is maybe no longer out. They’ve all found a place to bed down, in their own place or someone else’s, and Louis wants what they have. He feels a bit like it’s shore leave for the sailors or something, tonight, with the way no one seems willing to vacate the bar until last call, even at the divey five-a.m. joint that he works at. He’s not one to stick up his nose—dives need patrons too, and he needs a weekly paycheck—but he wants to fucking go home. His eyes feel like knives and his gut feels like fire.

He’s not supposed to be smoking inside, but he’s not supposed to be doing a lot of things, like giving his friends free drinks or fucking his boss. He’s having visions of the last meal he ate, twenty-five-cent cup of coffee from a dishwater blonde named Irene, served with piping-hot hash browns that he immediately (accidentally) ashed his cigarettes into. His skin felt like the eggs she served him, scrambled-up and over-warm, and her eyes looked darker than the coffee in his cup.

He watches the strangers around him search their wallets for their last crumpled single-bills, and he wipes down the bar for the fifteenth time that night. He’s small change, not garnering the attention he usually gets on a Saturday night, not when everyone’s too bleary-eyed to know what time it is and too far-gone to notice anyone but the stooges on the barstool beside them. He extinguishes his cigarette and paws for another, digging down deep inside his pocket. He finds a quarter and a bent butt, half-smoked, that he stuck there as he chased down the bus two nights ago.

Across the street he sees the twenty-four-hour diner he frequents, moniker lit up like rhinestones and glitter, and he has a full-body ache to leave this shithole for that one. He resists. He needs the paycheck.

He’s glad he remembered his threadbare peacoat before his shift, hungover and distracted as he was, beautiful boy with a forgotten name still asleep in his bed.

Louis wipes wisps of hair from his eyes and lights the half-spent butt, knowing he’ll regret it in a moment. Maybe he’ll spend his last quarter on the morning edition as he walks home, trying to find a new place for rent, trying to find a new position for hire, trying to find a way out of town. His trash can is filled with empty beer bottles and red-ink-stained copies of personal ads that didn’t pan out.

As far as Saturday nights go, Louis has had worse, but this one isn’t breaking any records. He may as well be slinging cocktails to Baptists for the tips he’s making, and he doesn’t remember a time where he’s gotten such little attention while bartending on a weekend.

He wants to gather up his meager tips and go home, almost as much as he wants to skip town even if it means hitchhiking or jumping on a rail, wants to live by the light of upcoming Texaco signs and not the neon of the half-burnt-out Bud advertisement. He wants to burn brighter than the cherry end of his cigarette and ride his way around the country, meeting someone other than his regulars and the marmalade-slinging Irene.

He wants morning specials in towns he’s never heard of, wants to break down on the side of Route 66 and meet a kind out-of-towner who’ll help him call for a tow-truck, before they fall in love while waiting for the truck to arrive, breathing in exhaust and each other’s shy smiles.

Louis has high hopes for someday, higher than heading home as paperboys deliver the news, higher than heading home with someone whose name he doesn’t remember, if he ever knew it at all.

He can’t decide if he has the energy to get food before going home, whether to pay Irene a visit after this shift or just before his next one. He can’t decide how high he wants to go, can’t decide how many demands he’s ready to place on the world just yet, not when he’s refilling rail bourbon to people who stopped making eye contact with him an hour ago.

At closing time, he clears the bar out quickly enough, most of the customers ready enough to stumble home together, supporting their gaits on one another’s shoulders. It’s so late that it’s early. 

He starts to sweep the floors after wiping down the tables, and he feels like he’s sweeping away his own hopes for a future along with the dust and peanut shells. He’s so fatigued that he almost misses the golden window where he can see the sun between the buildings across the street, rolling onto the pavement, making it all sparkle like a carpet of diamonds.

Louis walks home past empty lots, where gravel looks like it’s the cash-crop of the city, along with cigarette butts and empty soda cans. He lights up a final cigarette and tosses the finished packet aside, feeling like he’s washing away the ghost of Saturday night as dawn breaks all around him.


End file.
